


sub zero

by swimnayeon



Category: Pentagon (Korea Band), Triple H (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, Depression, M/M, Other, Suicide, YEET unrequited love, im sorry, to the -3 shinwon stans and a certain one reading this right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-08-28 01:51:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16714255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimnayeon/pseuds/swimnayeon
Summary: shinwon's hurting and hoetaek's a fucking idiot.





	1. sub zero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adachistormzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adachistormzy/gifts).



> in bold it is hoetaek's story, underlined it is shinwon's, bold and underlined is both of them at once

**sometimes hoetaek wonders how he ever thought it was a good idea to leave.**

-

who knew motel rooms sought such comfort for the heartbroken in their times of need?

go shinwon, of course.

because here he is.

here he is on the floor of some shitty motel covered in the stench of regret and homesickness and depression and his own vomit, his hair unkempt and cold, oh god so fucking cold, fingers circling the ink sunk deep into his skin.

ink that he can never get rid of.

and as tears fall over chapped lips and land on dirty linoleum, shinwon’s mind is wondering to places where he thinks logically for once because why for the love of his own sanity did he even bother to go looking for him?

him, who was never going to come back.

him, who had broken more promises than any man to ever live.

him, lee hoetaek.

that goddamned man.

-

**“i had someone,”**

**hoetaek smiles tiredly into the recorder, swaying his feet around in the sub zero water of the lake.**  
**perhaps he should’ve gone to somewhere a little more secretive, secluded.**  
**heck, he’s already been spoken to twice.**

**low toned concerns from complete strangers hoetaek has never met nor intended to meet mean nothing anymore.**

**are you okay’s and aren’t you cold’s are just more and more sounds made to have meaning by these old white men in robes claiming everything was latin or greek or some other variation of the sort and honestly, hoetaek is tired of it.**

**hoetaek is tired.**

**“long ago, i had the best someone in the entire world”**

**heavy shoulders from too much thinking have pulled him down further and further til the only stable thing hoetaek knows anymore is rock bottom.**

**because at least now he can't get any lower.**  
**besides, there’s always been a weird pleasure in knowing things for once don't get worse.**  
**he knows what to expect, by now.**

**and maybe hoetaek’s reaching. maybe he’s reaching when he says that there’s even the slightest chance that he wants anything to do with him.**  
**a speck of dust, a glimmer in the night sky, just something to hoetaek tells him that his someone is still out there.**  
**he’s still searching.**

**“but he shouldn’t have to be”**

**it's the first time hoetaek’s laughed in years.**  
**he hadn’t meant to say that out loud and it isn't funny but something about the mixture of nervous cold energy and the stupidity of it all and he just can't hold it in anymore.**  
**noises that hoetaek’s pretty sure he’s never made before bubble out his throat in idiotic, obnoxiously loud snorts.**

_**what a fucking idiot i am** _

**he thinks**

**_saying the wrong thing, how fucking stupid of me, almost as stupid as deciding to leav_ e**

**the laughter dies down.**

**“apologies, let me start again”**

**he takes a moment to compose himself before holding the recorder back up to his lips.**

**“i had someone. long ago, i had the best someone in the entire world”**

**he doesn't know what to say, now.**

**because what words could describe his someone in all their glory?**  
**how does one use only the power of speech to describe a boy who once hung off hoetaek’s arm with such love and dedication but now barely grazed the edges of hoetaek’s orbit, no longer there beside him anymore and probably happy with that flirty girl he’d always seemed a little too friendly with.**

**a boy who hoetaek once loved, maybe even still loved, but a boy who only once loved hoetaek.**

**the answer is you don't, but god’ll be damned if hoetaek doesn't try his best.**

**“he was a big idiot. a big, soft, idiot who i couldn’t ever get sick of even if i tried.”**

**fond memories of sitting beneath tree trunks as a gentle handed someone repeatedly pushed hoetaek’s chin up and and to the left and to the right, moaning about how ‘the angle’s never right’ before giving in and just taking the damn picture flood his mind.**

**memories.**

**things that happened once before and exist only through the mind's eye.**

**funny that, there’s no other way to relive a moment like scrolling back through years of uncharted useless memories (what hoetaek had for lunch, which jacket he wore to school in 2008, pointless things nobody _really_ needed to know) just to find that one moment you wish you could’ve stayed in forever in a complete euphoric mess of emotions and happiness.**

_**yeah,** _

 

**he tucks his bottom lip behind his teeth in worry.**

 

_**funny** _

**“perhaps i ought to describe the way his eyes lit up whenever i took him to his favourite restaurant or when i first told him i’d bought the studio for us to dance in or whenever i told him that it was a cuddle and movie day, or how he used to look at me or how he managed to seem like a god just doing the simplest things, but right now i can’t”**

**a violent shiver tears through hoetaek’s body and he nearly drops the recorder.**

**maybe it's sadness laced with drops of regret that rip him down to the core, or maybe it's just the cold.**

**not even hoetaek can really tell.**

**“right now i can only tell you, maybe even him if this makes it his way, how much that kid meant to me, how much i regret fucking it all up and running away just because,”**

**he hasn't even realised he's been crying until the sobs rack his chest and refuse to let him speak.**

**god what a loser he'd sound to anyone listening.**

**just some lonely guy on a riverbed somewhere in korea with decisions to make and on the brink of frostbite, sad when you read it aloud, right?**

**then hoetaek makes his decision.**

**with sudden fondness, he turns the recorder round in one hand, giving that same tired and worn out smile that any fool could see was nothing to do with happiness.**

**then he raises it til it just touches the peak of his chin, for emphasis of course.**

**and he speaks.**

**“my someone's name was hyojong,”**

**god he needed to get that off his chest.**

**“and if he's listening right now, then don't let it bother him. throw it in the trash, feed it to the dogs, get hyuna to stomp on it if those two finally got together in the end, just don't hang on to it. let it go, let me go, im not worth your time or worries. i hurt you.-”**

-

“he hurt me.”

-

**“i ruined your life and pulled you down”**

-

“he ruined my life but i suppose i only did slow him down”

-

**“im so sorry, i should've never even asked you on that date”**

-

“i had to watch him ask someone else on a date with my own two eyes”

-

**“hyojong-”**

-

“hoetaek-”

-

**“i still love you”**

-

 

and now shinwon is lost.  
shinwon is alone.  
shinwon is a million light years away from home and he just can't get the vision of hoetaeks promises out of his head.

because hoetaek said something before he left.

something that shinwon, as his painfully infatuated best friend, didn't deserve to hear.

“don't cry,”

hoetaek wiped the tears bubbling at the tops of shinwons cheeks.

they both ignored hyojong clinging to the older mans car sobbing because ‘you can't go, taekkie, you can't’.

“little fairy”

it's what hoetaek had been calling him since they were little, since he often resembled some bizarre delicate woodland creature at the best of times.  
maybe hoetaeks nickname should’ve been dumbass, then, going off that analogy.

“we’ll meet again”

shinwon wishes he would have recorded that, and all the other times hoetaek’s told a lie just to make someone else feel better and put them in a folder to throw off a fucking bridge.

because shinwons sick of it and he just wants to know the truth and tell the truth.

but he's lost his chance.

“in another life”

this is the part shinwon always skips over.  
the page in a book you always flip past, the detail of a painting you always deliberately miss because what does it matter? it's just an extra brush stroke.

but sometimes that extra brush stroke means you're never gonna see his smile again.

-

**it's been a while since hoetaek stopped recording, but even waist deep in the near frozen water he felt like he hadn't said his final words.**

**then it hits him.**

**and he stumbles back, as quickly as possible for someone whose limbs are shutting down underwater, his trembling pale blue hands can barely wrap round the recorder.**

**so he instead lays his head down next to it, only just managing to press the small red square button.**

**“it's me again”**

**and he wants to cry because again he sounds so fucking stupid and sad and it makes him want to throw up and how vulnerable and cowardly he's being.**

**but it's too late now.**

**“i forgot something, someone”**

**he's so cold it's getting harder and harder to talk.**

**“shin, shinwon”**

**he coughs, pale breath marking white streaks against the pitch black sky.**

**“i’ll see you again, sometime, yeah? just, just like, like i promised when we, we were young”**

**hoetaeks going to die.**

**this is it.**

**he regrets it right now, obviously, since he realises that rock bottom is far from what he is.**

**hoetaek has a nice house, a good job, clean clothes, healthy food.**

**there's really no point in this.**

**but he does it anyway.**

**because**

-

“lee hoetaek is such a fucking idiot”

-

**and he doesn't think things through.**

**“little fairy, i promise you”**

**and with his last drops of energy hoetaek rolls over, gripping clumps of grass and pulling himself down to meet the icy waters.**  
**it laps at his chin, teases his lips, suffocates his nose, stings his eyes, and stops his heart.**

-

“and even if he's gone, there's always the next life”

shinwons talking to empty space and a motel ceiling at this point, psychotic with the sudden news.

the tattoo hoetaek had dared him to get in a drunken game of dare or dare one night is his only reminder.

just a stupid little portrait of a stupid little fairy and shinwon sometimes just wants to scream because he's just wondering  how hoetaek had  _ever_ thought it was a good idea to leave?


	2. twenty miles to home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shinwon was always there, always hearing and seeing and knowing things hoetaek just assumed he was in the bathroom for.
> 
> he was in the tree, listening to hyojong complain over and over again but not realising how privileged he was just to be there.  
> just to be beside hoetaek in that way, to be able to look at him like he was a million stars in hyojongs night sky, even if it was just through three thousand pound mechanical lenses hyojong had gotten for his eighteenth birthday.
> 
> shinwon had bought him those.

**_  a flashback to, let's say, five years ago maybe? _ **

 

“what am i to you?”

 

shinwon whispers into the silence, sly fingers on his left hand tracing the details of hoetaek’s face and his right finding comfort in the soft material of his pyjamas. 

it’s difficult, through the tears and the time and the tenderness, to think about how they even got  here. 

to think about how this is the closest they’ll ever be, the closeness many may never feel, maybe it gets to shinwon. 

 

but hoetaek knows what shinwon is thinking. 

 

“everything.”

 

and he melts. 

 

shinwon lets his everything go against his best friend hoetaek 

‘best friend’ is an umbrella term for shinwon, including anything from just the person he talks to the most in lessons he doesn’t share with hoetaek, to hoetaek himself, who undeniably holds shinwon’s heart in his hands. 

every star in shinwon’s sky may as well be shining just for him, so he knows it’s safe to deflate. 

he lets go the emotions, the grudges, the secret resentments he never had the heart to bring up, the feelings. 

 

he lets them all go but knows deep down that hoetaek isn't doing the same, that hoetaek will never do the same, but that’s okay. 

 

it’s what’s happening now that matters the most to shinwon. 

 

so what if hoetaek doesn’t look at him the same for the next week? 

what does it matter if he sits with jinho instead of shinwon? 

shinwon wouldn’t really mind if hoetaek deliberately ran away from him or offhandedly insulted him or made plans right in front of his face without inviting him. 

he knows it’s simply to never let the heat and the emotion and the intensity hoetaek feels when he’s with shinwon like this be known to _anyone_ , honestly that’s just fine. 

 

the only thing that stops shinwon from going over the edge during the times of distance from hoetaek after their special meetings is the sweet, sweet knowledge that this isn’t how hoetaek really feels. 

 

hoetaek can claim to be so stupidly in love with hyojong and to want to marry him when they grow up and how he would never ever be unloyal, yet he can’t erase the times when he’s had his lips pressed against shinwon’s and muttered sweet ‘i love you’s’ into his ears. 

 

“shinwon?”

 

“hm?”

 

the light in hoetaek’s eyes is so striking shinwon feels like he’s just looked straight at the sun during a solar eclipse. like shinwon knows he shouldn’t, that it’d leave damage that he’d end up regretting, but god was it pretty to look at. 

 

“am i allowed to have two everythings?”

 

it would be a lie to say that shinwon doesn't feel a pang of hurt because he just knows hoetaek’s talking about hyojong, again. 

 

oh don't get me wrong shinwon loves hyojong ten times more than the next guy, even a fool from a mile away could tell, but sometimes shinwon wants hoetaek all to himself. sometimes shinwon wants only the purest, realest version of hoetaek, without any extras. 

or maybe it’s not the realest, maybe it’s just the version of hoetaek he created so shinwon could feel like he actually meant something to him other than something sinful he had to hide when around other people. 

whatever it is, shinwon wants that hoetaek, but he never seems to get it anymore. 

 

“of course you are”

 

however it was the fact that hyojong had almost been shinwon’s in the first place, that they'd been a promising pair and the closest of anyone long before either of them started seeing hoetaek in _that_ way. 

but then they lost each other, and it all faded away when hoetaek started working out, telling funnier jokes, styling his hair differently, when hoetaek was everything that shinwon wasn’t. 

hyojong and hoetaek just seemed right, after all, and shinwon was stupid to think that he’d ever be more than a good friend of hyojong’s. 

yet he’d always been a little bent out of shape at the fact that _he_ was the one that spent years showing hyojong how to love again, fixing him and making him the best form of himself he could be, but still hyojong chose hoetaek. 

shinwon had no right to be mad, it was just natures course ultimately, but still he was. 

this anger took him here, to the bed with hoetaek right now, and just a little secret between you and me, but in the first place, shinwon only forced himself to fall for hoetaek out of spite, possibly in the hopes of winning him off hyojong as some kind of sick payback. 

but he didn’t, he just became sad and accidentally in love with the wrong person to boot. 

so he’s stuck, though at least he gets these stolen moments with hoetaek all to himself, no matter how loyal and honest _he_ claims to be with hyojong, he’ll always come running back to shinwon. 

 

“of course you are” shinwon repeats when he doesn’t get an answer.

 

a gentle hum spills from hoetaek’s lips. 

 

hoetaek’s stupid, know it all lips that have said some things that shouldn’t have been said, yet still entice shinwon even though he knows he shouldn't. 

after all, his taekkie has a boyfriend. 

 

“hoetaek?”

 

but he does. 

 

“are you gonna ask if you can kiss me?”

 

the way hoetaek’s eyes go straight to his lips and he breathes in shakily through his teeth means shinwon doesn't even need to wait for any type of response. 

 

of course he knows that tomorrow’s shinwon is going to regret this, that tomorrow’s shinwon is gonna hate right now’s shinwon with such a burning passion but he'll cross that bridge when he gets to it because in this moment all he can feel is hoetaek’s grip on his jumper and his hot breath on his neck and it feels so wrong, because hyojong’s a nice guy that has all his trust in hoetaek, but it feels so right because this is the kind of closeness shinwon’s been thirsting over. 

he covers up the thirst by calling it revenge. 

 

shinwon knows he shouldn't, but he does anyway, because sometimes go shinwon just doesn't think. 

 

-

_ **but this is real time** _

hoetaek left his home, left the city, obviously now left the world behind, but he’s always there in shinwon’s heart. 

in the tattoo just below his wrist, with the ink beneath his skin, shinwon feels like hoetaek is under there with it, will forever be under his skin and on his mind and in his heart and sometimes he feels like he’s nothing without hoetaek. 

honestly he’s probably right. 

 

shinwon leaves the motel two days after he gets the tape recorder in the mail and a location of where hoetaek had died. he packs his stuff and cleans up and pays for his stay and gets the fuck out of wherever it was. 

where to?   
his head would like to say something cool, like ‘far away from it all’ or ‘after hoetaek’, but no, no the truth is that shinwon is weak, and he’s given up trying to run from something that just isn’t chasing him, so yeah, shinwon’s going home. 

as sad or cliche as it might sound, the home he knew best left with hoetaek years ago, in his hands, but the modest little bungalow in cheongju is the best he’s got. there is where he has too much unfinished business to work through, to help distract him while he heals. 

now he’s adopted a newer mindset, realising that hoetaek had left years before he had died, and if shinwon had survived living without him for that long, then this wouldn’t be too different. 

 

he starts the car, breathing evenly in an attempt to stop the crawling anxieties from getting to him, tries not to look as street signs pass, and each one tells him he’s ten miles closer to home. 

_home_

but shinwon doesn’t get to drive past the ‘twenty miles to cheongju’ sign, because something stops him (well it’s a foot on his brake, and the foot is attached to his leg, and okay yeah maybe shinwon pulls over by himself, but it’s not just that). 

there’s an urge burning in him, bringing his hand off the steering wheel and onto the power button of his phone. 

it’s a wreck, cracked all over and crashing every couple of seconds, but shinwon’s so grateful for it in this moment, because he hits a name in his contacts list with a trembling finger. 

the dialling screen pops up. 

it rings once, twice, same pitch, same pace, shinwon’s heartrate going up with every passing tone, then finally 

 

“ʰᵉˡˡᵒˀ”

 

shinwon wants to cry, he really honestly needs to, but he hasn’t drank anything in three days and dehydration won’t even let him break down, so he just sighs. the contact name is hard to believe, and he hates that his own number was deleted from that phone, but that’s not something to worry about now. 

shinwon hits speakerphone, smiles with all the effort he can, and speaks 

 

“hyojong? it’s me, shinwon”

 

hyojong doesn’t speak, and shinwon wonders if he’s feeling the same. 

it must be hard, to finally hear shinwon saying his name after so many years of unjust mistreatment from him simply because he was better for hoetaek than shinwon ever could be. 

hyojong never deserved that. 

 

“ᶦˢ ᶦᵗ ʳᵉᵃˡˡʸ ʸᵒᵘˀ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ, ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ʷʰᵉʳᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ʸᵒᵘˀ ᵃʳᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ᵒᵏᵃʸˀ ᵒʰ ᵐʸ ᵍ”

 

a chuckle escapes shinwons lips as he listens patiently to hyojong’s panicked string of questions, and he suddenly forgets the last time he laughed, the last time he felt this warm and cared for by _any_ one, and it was really coming from someone he’d treated so poorly. 

guilt was an understatement. 

 

“hyo, hyo it’s okay. i promise you, i’m okay”

 

“ᵃⁿᵈ ʰᵒᵉᵗᵃᵉᵏˀ”

 

shinwon inhales through his front teeth at that, stifling a curse word. 

nobody had let hyojong know, adding on to the list of a thousand and one things hyojong shouldn’t have to deal with, adding on to shinwon’s culpability. 

it hurts like a bitch, but this isn’t about him right now. 

 

“i’ll tell you all about it when we see each other”

 

“ʷʰᵉⁿ ʷᵉ ˢᵉᵉ ᵉᵃᶜʰ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳˀ”

 

shinwon manages to smile just slightly, because at least there’s _some_ good news for hyojong amidst it all, and he almost forgets the recording device in the glove compartment with _his_ last words. 

almost 

 

“i’m coming home, hyo”

 

he swears he’s never heard a man happier. 

 

 

 

 

_ten miles to cheongju_

 


End file.
